The Middle East’s largest non-Arab nations—Iran and Turkey—have emerged as the fiercest critics of recent peace agreement between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi. To Behnam Ben Taleblu and Aykan Erdemir, the near-identical reactions of Ankara and Tehran reveal much about the “tectonic shifts” occurring in the region:

[Ironically], while in 2020 the UAE became the third Arab country to recognize Israel—after Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994)—Turkey and Iran were, long ago, the first (1949) and second (1950) majority-Muslim nations to establish relations with the Jewish state.

Although Turkey and Iran have competed over regional hegemony for centuries, more recently they have exhibited a willingness to “compartmentalize” their rivalry and make the most of any tactical convergence—be it through sanctions-busting or anti-Kurdish policies, for example. The engine behind this convergence has been the same: Islamist state capture, first via a popular revolution in Iran (1979) and then using the ballot box in Turkey (2002). Its results have led to a more robust assault against the U.S.-led world order, as well as a nosedive in relations with Israel and other U.S. partners in the Middle East.

Iran has always seen the UAE and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as jurisdictions ripe for hedging against America. For instance, despite the centrality of the Gulf to Washington’s maximum-pressure campaign, Tehran continued to use front companies located in the Emirates to help bust sanctions, sometimes even openly, as in the case of petrochemical sales. Another example was the escalation on full display last summer by Iran, first in the maritime domain, and then against a U.S. drone. The recipient of these signals? The UAE.

If anything, Taleblu and Erdemir conclude, the enmity of both Iran and Turkey has encouraged the UAE to move closer toward their shared enemy—Israel.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.